This ominous sounding line straight from the Wizards of the Coast website signals the winds of change, with the new Scars of Mirrodin set for Magic the Gathering, the world's most prolific and popular (probably) CCG. This new 249 card set comes with a few new tricks, a boatload of awesome, and a few WTH moments. Let's start with the good.
Some Stuff Concerning the Set:
Lots of artifacts! These past few sets, with the newish Eldrazi have seen a spike in non-colored cards and SoM, featured on the metal plane Mirrodin, is not lacking in cool artifacts. Since these are real (read: DS is a purist, therefore colorless) artifacts, they can work in nearly any deck, even thought some are keyed to specific colors (the trigon cycle, for exmaple). A rise in artifacts means we might see some cool new mono colored decks with interesting flavor, or better synergy with multi-colored decks. Of course, you, being a savvy Magic player, already knew this, think of it for the benefit of the newbies. In the tournament scene, multi-colored decks often use dual lands to account for the color split, but with a set focused on artifacts, mana coloration is less of a problem.
White works well with the new artifact-focused lens of Scars. With cards like the Indomitable Archangel using the new metalcraft mechanic (which will be discussed a bit later) and Tempered Steel aiding the growth of machines, the synergy between white and artifact has never been higher.
Black got an enormous boost in power in this new set with the Infect mechanic. While not exclusively a black ability, infect is primarily featured on black cards, and I wouldn't be too surprised if a potential new black planeswalker (pure speculation) had an ability: (-2) your creatures have infect this turn.
My problem with infect has little to do with the actual mechanic, but the release of this guy. Platinum Emperion is a potential game-breaker, but in relation to my previous point, he was released in the same set as the infect mechanic, making him effectively worthless. Infect, by the way, is a combination of wither and old-school poison counters. Creatures with infect deal damage as -1/-1 counters and if they hit players, the player gets that many poison counters. Once a player has ten poison counters, he becomes poisoned and loses the game.
Blue is a bit odd this set. Traditionally a set that pairs most with artifacts, with that mantle seemingly handed off the White this round, blue seems to lack a real niche of its own. Naturally then, blue heads toward the darker side of the mana pool and pairs up well with black and the new proliferate mechanic. This new mechanic focuses on the spread of counters, when a card has a counter on it (be it charge, +1/+1, -1/-1 or anything) and the player proliferates, a new counter of that type is added. With cards like Inexorable Tide allowing the rapid accumulation of counters, infect (to be discussed a bit later) becomes a particularly nasty mechanic when paired with the blue use of proliferate.
Red and green are in a confusing place, much like blue in this set. Set in a world of metal, the natural powers of green mana seem to join blue in a slightly darker place. There isn't a real "green" mechanic, but Genesis Wave just screams "build a deck around me!"
Red, traditionally an artifact-breaker, continues with that tradition in SoM, with plenty of ways to blow up those pretty trinkets your opponent is lording over. Hoard-Smelter Dragon is a great way to deal with those pesky machines that are messing with your "burn it all" play-style. Speaking of burning things, did you hear about the new planeswalkers? You probably did, since they were in the beginning of the review. Either way, here's Koth! This crazy guy will probably see some tournament play and currently a rediculously expensive card, even by himself. This credit, he deserves of course, for his sheer amount of awesomeness. But okay, enough gushing over how great Koth is, you want to know about the precontstructed decks, what you can get right out of the box.
As far as the preconstructed decks go, SoM brings us five new theme decks which are:
Myr of Mirrodin: a return of the little buggers which make a suprisingly effective swarm white/artifact deck
Metalcraft: a red/blue deck focusing on the new mechanic, aptly named metalcraft, which goes into effect when you control three more or artifacts (note, it comes with two memnites)
Deadspread: a black/blue deck focusing on a "wither" style game, using -1/-1 counters and the new mechanic proliferate.
Relic Breaker: A Red/Green deck doing what nature does best, breaking things. Use cards like shatter to anti-meta the whole new artifact focused set.
Finally, last but so-far-from-least-its-not-even-close, we have the last deck
Phyrexian Posion: This deck, much like the Zendikar vampire deck, wins my vote for best precon deck of the set. A Black/Green bizarre hybrid, this deck makes good use of the infect mechanic, especially since it includes the infect 'lord' Hand of the Praetors. We haven't had a chance to play around with this deck, but I'm pretty sure my friends would ban me the use of this deck were I to buy it.
In summary, Scars looks to be a great set with a host of weird mechanics and a few worthwhile precon decks to look into from this October 1st release. Infect is a weird but stupidly good mechanic, and I'm expecting some kind of counter mechanic come February when we get our hands on the next set.
-DS
Links and info courtesy of Wizards of the Coast
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